Listen, like many here, Michigan sports are what I care about. Outside of a few family friends, I don't care who goes to Michigan. I trust admissions to let in the best and brightest etc. ect. It is my opinion, and I understand it's not the popular one, that friending players when they commit is a good show of support. If I were to commit to Michigan, I would be thrilled to have 100+ Michigan students, people I plan to soon go to school with, friend me and show their excitement for my decision. If the athlete doesn't like that, they have the ability to decline. Now that I'm a recent graduate, I have stopped this behavior. That being said, I think the argument also applies somewhat to alumni as well. The athlete always has the right to decline a friend request.

People do creepy things with Facebook, I get that. But I think people assume the worst too quickly and ignore the positives a little university support through Facebook can provide.

Their band plays (or atleast used to) Dixie Land. If you didn't know what that environment has waiting for you, you didn't do your due diligence. Not that 200 racists is all that many, but that's to be expected there.

Is not confined to Mississippi or Ole Miss or red states as confirmed by various comments outlined here. Let us not confuse what happened in the 1950's and 1960's with how life is today in the south in the second decade of the 21st century, unless you have actual first hand knowledge. As someone with that first hand knowledge, it is obvious that most of you do not possess it.

Ole Miss is a very beautiful campus and a growing school with a ton of very pretty young women and ambitious and intelligent young men of all races. If you had ever visited the campus, gone to a football game, spent a little time in the grove, discussed Chuckie Mullins with an alumnus, or attended the Texas-Ole Miss football game where they cheered James Meredith at half-time, you might have a clue as to how things are these days as opposed to those days. I suggest you check out the ESPN 30-30 film on Ghosts of Mississippi to educate yourselves a bit more.

It is a place that some young men find to be a good fit for their academic and athletic careers, and we should leave it to them to decide for themselves.

True... the again, no other campus in this country had an incident like this yesterday. If I am a black athlete I would have to think very hard (no, not really - why any black athlete would go there is beyond me).

Are we sure they are the only campus in the country where something like that might have happened, or is it just that Ole Miss is under more media scrutiny because of its past? From what I gather, it sounds like this whole incident blew over in a brief time, and that most of the students there were gawkers, not actual "rioters."

From the what the articles say, and the videos, it does seem that the majority were just seeing what's going on, but it's far-fetched to say their campus is under more scrutiny about these things. I really don't think news agencies have crews waiting for stuff like this to happen, and if there were racist protests against Obama all over the country, I think that would have gotten attention as opposed to just saying shhh....it's only Ole Miss.

But I think the point is that if any kind of racial disturbance happens in a place like Mississippi, that story is more likely to gain media currency nationwide than a comparable event would elsewhere. That is probably true.

The story here apparently is that a few dozen people protested the election result in front of the student union, before a larger crowd developed around them and some racist yelling broke out before campus police broke it up. Is that national news? I don't know.

Well, of course it's news. Ole Miss -- given its distinctly hateful past, its current tendency to wave Confederate flags, and its arguably small but still quite unashamed band of racists -- has come a long way, but clearly not far enough. You wouldn't see such overt displays of racism at many other large universities. Nor would you see so many student bystanders passively letting it happen. The only other recent example is LSU. But those rednecks weren't students; they were fans.

Actually, nowadays you don't need to send a news crew down to Mississippi to report on this stuff. You can compile a story just by assembling a few Twitter postings (which is essentially what happened here - most of the footage came from various students' cell phones). When I say that Mississippi might be under more scrutiny, I don't mean that it's a media hotbed, but that it could serve as an easy "go-to" place for reporters looking to write a story about racism. The notion of Mississippi as a racist place is already ingrained in the popular imagination.

I just think that Northerners (and I am one) should be cautious about throwing stones when it comes to racism. By a lot of indicators (including residential segregation, income gaps, etc.) the South is actually making better progress than our region is. Today almost all of the most racially-segregated metropolitan areas in the country are in the Midwest.

You must have missed the news about Hampden-Sydney then. I'm still reeling from this, as I knew the school very well when I lived in VA. I am not shocked that there are some bigots enrolled there. I AM shocked that they would act like a bunch of thugs, however. Sadly, the racism is less surprising than the profound lack of judgment.

Myron Rolle is one of their trustees; I've been wondering if he will say anything publicly.

Disgraceful.

And if I were a black athlete, I am not sure it would dissuade me since truthfully, I'm probably going to encounter some version of that sh*t no matter where I go. Maybe not from a MOB of people, granted.

Yeah, I remember that too. Several of the players, including Howard, said that they could never play for Ole Miss after seeing all those rebel flags. The flag was very prevelant back then at Ole Miss games.

North Platte (NE) on my way back from skiing in CO. I made it to the off-ramp and that was the end of the '82 Plymouth. Before I could open the hood, 3 motorists stopped to offer help. Damn fine folks out there.

So, sorry to interrupt the proceedings here, but is this whole story, from top to bottom, a whole lot of overblown bullshit? Because anytime I hear about CBS News, or a New York reporter, talking about someplace like Ole Miss, my initial instinct is, "Oh they are going to butcher that story." And so, apparently, they have. Naturally, the political correctness forces at Ole Miss are now conducting a Kumbaya vigil, by candlelight of course. So they can all come together, right now, one terrible night after one person was arrested for public intoxication and one other person was arrested for failing to respond to a policeman's order. Hell, there are worse riots in East Lansing for a volleyball win. Harvard has has much worse riots; among the Harvard faculty, that is.

If anybody comes up with any eyewitness accounts or video of something that could remotely qualify as a "racial disturbance," please do share it with all of us. Because so far, as far as I can tell, hardly anyone who like gets paid to report the news has bothered with anything so troublesome as that. Witnesses, proof, confirmation. That sort of thing. It is such a compelling story, without that other stuff.

It is remarkable to read through this thread, and watch the collective freakout, not to mention some of the ignorant arrogance from Michigan, about what happened in Oxford on election night.

Just above, I questioned whether the story was complete bullshit. Judging by the original post linking to a true freakout of a "sports" story by Paul Myerberg* of USAToday, it would be easy to say that yes indeed the story that the nation, and prospective scholarship athletic recruits ought to think twice about Ole Miss, was complete bullshit. Personally, I still like Twitchy's approach to the story. Pretty much "complete bullshit."

But narrowing the story down as much as possible from afar, it may be possible to say that the story is only "near-complete bullshit." A reasonably thoughtful report from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution blogger boils the whole thing down to perhaps someone (unidentified) hearing some (unspecified, in terms of nature and number) racial epithets used, in a crowd of a couple of hundred alcohol-fueled undergraduates.

So is that the glimmer, the single grain, of truth that allows this story to avoid categorization as wholly made-up bullshit?

I love the comment, somwhere in this thread, feaking out about the Ole Miss band playing Variations on Dixie by classical composer (and member of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra) Frank Proto. Proto is a composer who specializes in American folk thems. His works include a spoken-word composition much like Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait -- which was also debuted by the Cincinnati Symphony -- called Casey at the Bat, as well as a tribute to George Gershwin called A Portrait of George.

*Paul Myerberg was, I gather, the originating force behind "Pre-Snap Read." Would somebody care to get ahold of Paul by Twitter or email or otherwise, and ask him if he thinks that his original sotry, questioning the future of Ole Miss recruting, and perhaps the future of its football program, was a worthy national inquiry, based on the real facts coming out of Oxford?

Is worth the kerfluffle, but what does a classical composer have to do with whether playing the song is still right or not? Birth of the Nation and the Jazz Singer are historic for their groundbreaking natures....but I'm not sure anyone wants to see a remake of either of them.

The song started in minstrel shows with people in blackface longing to return to the South. And after the verses that everyone knows, the lyrics don't get better. With strong connotations because it was picked up as an anthem for the South continuing to rebel. I don't think this composer was trying to say "the South will rise again" when he arranged it, but at some point you have to ask "is this still a good idea?" And if that time comes after he's done it, it's not on him but those who decide to continue it's legacy.

FWIW, Ole Miss has one of the highest percentages of African-American students of any flagship state university (in the neighborhood of 15-20%). Tarnishing the entire school because of what sounds like the actions of a few bad apples is not fair.

But didn't Ole Miss have to change both their mascot and their fight song recently (under much public protest, as well, as I recall) because they were racist? I'm not reacting to just this incident. Ole Miss has a very ugly and very recent history, as far as racial issues are concerned.

Also, having gone to the University of Texas for grad school, I can honestly say that having a high percentage of black students doesn't automatically make a school not racist. UT has a dubious relationship and history with race, but also has a sizable black population.

They have a black student population below the national average? I can't imagine that's true. I would be very surprised if they didn't have a significantly larger proportion of black students than we do.

I don't know that much about Ole Miss's admissions policies, but given that it is the flagship school of the state with the highest proportion of African Americans in the country (37%), it's likely to have a pretty substantial black student body. Incidentally, African Americans are underrepresented at pretty much all prestigious schools. That's not something exclusive to the Deep South. The state of Michigan is 14% black, but U-M is only around 6-7%. (Even before affirmative action was struck down, the percentage never reached double figures.)

I have lived in Michigan, Ohio, and Mississippi. I attended public schools in all 3 states, and northeast Ohio was the most racist area I lived in. When I lived in Mississippi, I attended a racial integrated middle school. When I lived in Michigan and Ohio, I attended public schools that had almost no minorities in terms of blacks or hispanics or Jews or asians or whatever.

You are living in the far past if you think that Mississippi is the most racial backward state. I suggest you try and learn something before voicing your own prejudices in a public forum.

Obama only won because the election was rigged by the Chinese who wanted to get the rights to the Star Wars movies away from Disney and the Mississippi students were protesting because they knew this would eliminate any chance of them ever getting Admiral Ackbar as their mascot.

All I know is that when we played them in the 1991 Gator Bowl, their band's halftime show was actually "Six Variations on Dixie" or something like that. They literally just spent the entire halftime playing Dixie. Add to that their fans having more confederate flags than you would see at a 'Dukes of Hazard' convention and I can't imagine how some kids decide to go play there. Obviously that was 20 years ago so maybe things have changed. Maybe.

I would venture a guess that a kid who has grown up in the south isn't going to find a confederate flag quite as remarkable as we yankees do.

I'm not saying it's not offensive, but remember that this kid sees the same flag sold on bumper stickers & keychains every time he goes into a convenience store to buy a Slurpee. So you can see why he might not be so riled up to see them hanging out a dorm window or whatever.

4.5% to about 16%. Our holier than thou statements chastizing an entire university because of a group on campus acting like jackasses are a little off base. The idea that an athlete is going to feel persecuted there is absurd, just as it was absurd to think that the JoePa protests at PSU were going to hurt recruiting "because they support a guy who allowed Sandusky on the team."

I don't think any recruit is going to be turned off. They probably just won't be joining whatever group staged the protest.